


With Love For The Door

by JDylah_da_Kylah



Series: You Only Meant Well? [4]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Comfort/Angst, Depression, Diary/Journal, F/M, Friendship/Love, Illustrated, Loss, Making Love, Mental Breakdown, Non-Binary Frisk, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route - "I want to stay with you.", Self-Esteem Issues, Soul Bond, Stream of Consciousness, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 02:53:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9637727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JDylah_da_Kylah/pseuds/JDylah_da_Kylah
Summary: When Sans runs from the shelter and the safety of the promise Frisk once made to him—when he doubts the love of she who in many ways is as much his savior as the child—Toriel knows that no amount of rationality can prove reality to him.But love, of course, is rarely rational, so perhaps it's just as well.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime within/around [_You Only Meant Well?_](http://archiveofourown.org/series/629216). I put it as the fourth story of the series because it needed to live somewhere but that's not necessarily _when_ I'd imagine this takes place.
> 
> This started because I was having a pretty bad day myself and just wanted something to vent with—while angsty Frisk and Asriel can do the trick somedays, there's such a sweetness with Sans and Toriel that I think I needed most (from the whole art-as-therapy standpoint). Just. I dunno. Working with the idea that no matter how lost or broken you feel like you are, however much you think you've screwed up, more likely than not, there's someone who loves you and is hoping you'll come home (figuratively, anyway). Of course, this isn't restricted to lovers, buuuut it's Sans and Tori, so.
> 
> Review/critiques/comments/thoughts'n'things are always welcome. I do hope you enjoy. <3

  _Promises are everything._

* * *

 

I: "What was in that candle's light

that opened and consumed me so quickly?

Come back, my friend! The form of our love

is not a created form.

 

Nothing can help me but that beauty.

There was a dawn I remember when my soul heard something from your soul . . ."

* * *

The house is still, a myriad of silences one layered to another: the creaking floors (which is to say nothing of that old, old cracked foundation); the soughing wind outside and tree branches still winter-barren scraping there against the window-pane. Subtler still are the soft sighs of the child as they sleep in the adjacent room—and the unneeded exhalations of Papyrus, who of course doesn’t need to breathe but has since adopted the gesture as a courtesy, if not really for Frisk then the Humans of this Surface-world. The Humans, who are so easily frightened at all that is not just like them—

Their Frisk, ah, their Frisk is truly something special.

Toriel smiles to herself, despite the silences, despite his absence being all the more obvious now that the house lies thick upon itself, settled unto itself, shuttered up against the night. She feels her way through the darkened room, curtains drawn against the starslight; a whisper of her claws would illuminate the room with indigo flames and all the light she’d need—but no—but no—sometimes things are best left to darkness and to memory . . .

* * *

His mind had not been kind to him tonight.

Perhaps it began much earlier, when Toriel was preparing dinner, when Frisk neglected their usual distraction of Papyrus and wanted to help out. Ever-zealous, they’d looked from the steaming serving-dish to the plates laid out and then, and then, found the knife lying on the counter—it hadn’t taken much to put the pieces all together.

But when Frisk picked up the knife—

Toriel pauses in the darkness, reaching for the wardrobe, for a drawer, fishing for the bottom through a sea of socks. Her lips are pursed. No, that’s when it really started, the image flickering before her: the Human child with a knife.

Frisk, of course, who’s nine (or thereabouts?) in Human years, is old enough to be trusted with a butter knife, for goodness’ sake. Toriel had glanced at them, offered a word of caution, turned away, gave the matter no more thought, eager to finish washing dishes.

Except Sans—

Well, he could be _quick_ when he wanted to, and so he’d been tonight: a flashing cyan blur, a form hurtling itself by particles through space to wrest the knife from them. The serving-dish, the casserole, clattered to the floor, steaming contents spraying everywhere—none had hit the child though, of course—Sans had seen to that—had pulled them with him from the kitchen—

All this in an instant, when her paws were water-logged with suds and cooking grime.

Toriel wasn’t as fast as the skeleton, of course, but for a Boss Monster of considerable height and heft she was still a veritable force of speed and grace; she’d hurried from the sink to find them in the living room—the Human child fine—the Human child trying, with and without words, to comfort him—

But he—

His bones, grating, cyan-spitting sparks, were rattling; his eyes were dark, far more than lightless now; whatever he saw was not the child, not the threadbare couch or the cramped and cozy living room—

It took Tori’s kneeling down and whispering his name, again, again, over and over, in a voice which somehow hid too well its fear, to finally bring him back—but words did nothing for that awful trembling—

* * *

Papyrus had returned from Undyne and Alphys’ that night to find the house an austere, somber place: Toriel and Frisk had cleaned up the mess in the kitchen and she’d then allowed the child to cook their own supper from whatever leftovers they chose; Tori’d kept them company at the table but hadn’t had an appetite, not anymore; she sipped some chamomile tea and kept glancing worriedly towards their bedroom—well—through a wall, of course—but in her SOUL she didn’t really need to see . . .

“WHAT IS WRONG?” P’yrus had asked, taking in the scene and knowing full-well what must have been. “IS MY BROTHER ALRIGHT?”

A pause.

“ARE YOU?”

“We are fine, Papyrus,” Toriel had murmured. “Your brother is asleep. Please, could you and Frisk keep each other company for now? There are leftovers in the refrigerator if you wish.”

“UNDYNE PREPARED A MOST EXCELLENT REPAST—”

“Then please . . . there is pie on the counter if you want dessert . . .”

The Human child had taken P’yrus’ gloved hand tightly in their own and watched as Toriel hastily rose from the table, chair scraping its protest out against the tile floor, and hurried through the hall—forgetting, as she rarely did these days, to duck her head as she passed beneath the lintel—her horns always caught on the hallway’s lower ceiling—

That she cursed under her breath did not go unnoticed, but even Papyrus, who usually remarked about such things in awe, said nothing now.

* * *

Toriel sighs deeply, the room too empty, the night too dark. Fire licks now from her claws and she holds up a massive paw, fingers wide-splayed, if not really for light then at least to have her own shadow as company.

Too many years had that been so . . .

Finally she finds what she’s been looking for, there at the bottom of their sock drawer: a book, well-worn, claw-scuffed, filed though she’s kept them for so long. Quietly as her broad paws will allow on such creaking, temperamental floors she creeps out to the living room, turns on the smallest light, whisks out the fire from her paw with a breath and a shake.

The book falls open in her lap as she settles herself onto the couch—little bigger than her reading chair had been; she’s heard humans call such a couch a “loveseat,” but the name has never struck her fancy much. The confines of the cushions are far better a thing than the bed which now seems far too big without him there . . . What choice does she have except to wait? He wouldn’t answer if she called his phone, of that much she is sure . . . but in her SOUL she’s calling out to him, the same, and for that unspoken promise, ah, she knows that he’ll come back . . .

The silence then, the same thick silence, the same layers upon layers but now, now there is something oppressive in it that she doesn’t like—a bitter taste—a heaviness—

Her paws caress the book again, deep ancient eyes roving over the pages by the meager, tiny light. Her own tidy handwriting is a comfort, like an old, old friend; despite her fears, a chuckle clings to her throat, weaves itself throughout her SOUL—just another thread of the rope she’s casting out to him, wherever he has gone.

How much, since then, has changed.

* * *

II: “A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.

That’s how I hold your voice.”

* * *

_15 th December, 2X— _

_I have met a friend today._

_Well, perhaps it is too soon a thing to say, for I have not really met him, but I have heard him through the doors to the RUINS. Apparently he has been coming here quite often, and for many years . . ._

_I was following_ their _steps, the last child to leave me. How long has it been? I do not know. Perhaps longer than I know; I hardly care for dates or years; it all blurs together, anyway— I was following in their steps because I hoped it hadn’t been_ so _long as to mean only the one thing—_

_But no more of that. I have not written in this book for so, so long because of that . . ._

_I have met a friend today._

_He was knocking at the door—a sharp, sharp sound it was—so I wonder what kind of Monster he must be? Not one like me, surely, with fur to muffle the sound of a knock—but with a body fit for knocking—ah—he was knocking at the door and telling jokes to no-one._

_Until I came._

_I, wrapped up in sorrow, in memories, in my fears and loneliness and rage—_

_And then I heard a knock._

_Not the child’s, surely?_

_No—_

_“Knock knock,” he said._

_I held my breath; dared I to speak? It has been centuries since anyone has heard of me, from me; I am as much a memory as those bygone days of hope; I am as much a shadowed name as Chara’s or_

_~~(Am I—~~ _

_~~(What good~~ _

_~~(Should I be—~~ _

(There is an angry scrawl of ink across the page, and then the text, in a decidedly steadier hand, resumes its ordered march.)

_Even now, I do not know what moved me. I pressed a paw against the door, leaned close and closed my eyes. My SOUL, so empty now it seems, so lost, so frail, my SOUL was calling out—for help? For help I think it must have been . . ._

_“Who’s there?” I whispered back._

_A pause. I feared he hadn’t heard me; my SOUL pounded as fiercely as I’ve felt a Human child’s heart pound out its fear: but this was not exactly fear, except that I would be alone again._

_“Dishes,” came his reply. His voice—I liked his voice immediately. There is an easy cadence to it, a patience, and . . . something I cannot put a claw directly on. Perhaps I would like_ any _voice I heard today ~~(but that’s not true)~~ So long it’s been: myself, the Froggits and the Whimsuns and the . . . and the children_

_ Dishes. _

_"Dishes who?”_

_“Dishes a very bad joke.”_

_And how I laughed, how I laughed until I cried. And then he told me one more joke, and then another after that—I’d long since sat down with my ear pressed against the door, not minding the darkness now because out there, I knew, were snowy woods, and out_ there _. . . out there_ he _was._

 _Finally I told him one of my own jokes. Not my best, but by then my SOUL seemed like it was bursting and it seemed more important to simply tell him_ something _than to keep my silence yet again._

_And his laughter—if there is a thing better than his voice, it is his laughter._

_~~When Asgore laughed, it was—~~ _

(Another angry swatch of ink.)

_He had to leave, eventually._

_My friend has a younger brother, who must be read a bedtime story._

_And so here I am, alone again, but maybe—_

_I have not written for so long._

_There has been nothing to write of._

_Every day is the same, except if a child falls into the Underground, and then—_

_None stay with me long, and nothing changes, we are never freed, so . . ._

_So._

_My friend._

_I now have something to write about._

_He has a pleasing voice (why did it make my SOUL shiver?) and an honest laugh that hides nothing; he has a younger brother, whom he loves very, very much, and knuckles fit for knocking, whatever the rest of him might be._

_I must begin thinking of some jokes again. I’ve had no one to tell them to—and what silly joy they brought me. What luck it must be, that fate has brought me a friend who loves good jokes as much as me._

_I asked him to come back._

_I hope that he comes back._

* * *

Toriel, against her own strict rules, dog-ears the page, flips through a sizeable few pages afterwards filled with almost nothing more than jokes—jokes and small notes to herself about her friend—nuances she’d picked up, idle speculations—

Perhaps not so idle. Even now she’ll never forget the first trembling of her SOUL when she heard his voice, or how giddy she felt even when he’d left. Even her bond with Asgore had not been as . . . Well. They got along well enough and grew into love but times had been so different then, when Monsters still dwelt on the Surface, and oh, after the war—and after—

She shakes her head, refusing to allow herself the pitiable state of wandering through memories. And it is fair to no one, no one, neither Sans nor Asgore, to compare the two of them: in their own deep ways they’ve loved her and she, and she, the both of them—

And then her eye catches on an entry. SOUL-sick, she tilts the page back towards her meager reading-light, knowing well what’s there.

* * *

1 _st June, 2X—_

_I abhor this date. ~~Today~~_

(The page is wrinkled, crinkling beneath her paws with the salt of long-dried tears. She shakes her head, lets her eyes drop down to where the ink begins again.)

* * *

_2 nd June, 2X—_

_Today my friend came. I had no SOUL for jokes, try as he might to make me laugh. He must have eventually known that something was amiss; he asked me what was wrong—and carefree as his voice might be I’ve come to find a gentleness beneath—_

_~~Why does that sound like~~ _

_I started crying then—I couldn’t help it—no one, not in all these years, has been with me in a child’s leaving—in, I’m sure, a child’s death—_

_I started crying then and he was quiet for a while._

_But I think I have found a solution._

_I asked him, kind-SOULled Monster that he is, to please, please watch over any child that comes through the Underground, to protect them as best he can. I . . . cannot say he hesitated . . . but there was a . . . a sadness to his answer, even if he said yes, said yes and nothing more—no stipulations, no fine print_

_just yes, just yes, just yes._

_My mind warns me that yeses can be futile. He could be the weakest Monster in the Underground and if that’s true—?_

_But yes._

_But_ yes _and my SOUL sings with those decibels, though through the door they were; but_ yes _because I—in my SOUL—I know it isn’t true, that it doesn’t matter what one’s stats are, or what they look like, or—_

_For sheer goodwill and hope and ~~love—~~_

_Yes can be all the protection in the world._

* * *

(Toriel smiles, slightly, blushing deep beneath her fur because even now the words rekindle that giddiness, that strange feeling she didn’t dare describe on paper—well—because—how would it look, an aged respectable Boss Monster like herself, once a Queen, a royal mother—how would it look for her to be as giddy as some Monster first-love-struck?

Quite ridiculous, likely. And yet—)

* * *

_4 th June, 2X—_

_I feel . . . that I am hopeless . . .  that something is amiss or just falling into place or that the whole world is about to be shaken . . ._

_I_

(A scrawl of ink, a smear of it; the writing continues down the page in a somewhat tremulous hand.)

_I had a dream of him last night._

_I feel . . . like a schoolgirl, first-crush swooning . . . writing this._

_I am a silly old woman; why should I—_

_(But he keeps coming back, does he not? Have I not heard something change within his voice—or am I just imagining? Am I so . . . lonely and lovesick that I . . .)_

_It was not a particularly fleshed-out dream, but I suppose it’s to be expected._

_I have, of course, never seen him, but . . ._

_(His knuckles at the door and—all I have been able to write lately are skeleton puns and—)_

_It was a dream I saw more with my SOUL._

_My eyes saw only cyan light._

_I won’t . . . I can’t . . . write more of it than that. I do not know, I cannot understand; it was as if he touched my very SOUL but that was—that was—_

(A shaking trail of ink, as if she never lifted the nib of the pen but couldn’t find the word.)

_exquisite._

* * *

_5 th October, 2X—_

_I met him at the door today and asked if he’d seen the Human child. My SOUL still hurts; it is too empty here . . . But . . . I have never seen a child quite like them: not once, not once, did they attack me: their arms were always outheld, an offering of MERCY and nothing more—but nothing, nothing is sometimes everything—_

_I prayed he had._

_He laughed, but softly, and in his answer I heard those same notes as when he first made his promise to me. Yes, he had seen them, and—well—it seemed as if he were surprised. Relieved?_

_I do not know._

_But I asked him if he remembered his promise to me._

_I do not know what that might mean, for him or the child or the whole of Monsterkind._

_He told me not to worry: he does not forget these things and yes, he does still remember._

_I asked him, please, to come back and tell me how the child fares, if it isn’t too much trouble._

_He said something about knowing shortcuts, whatever those might be, and said that he’d come back and tell me . . . everything._

_Everything._

_Promises are everything._

* * *

III: “In the midst of making form, love

made this form that melts form,

with love for the door,

soul the vestibule.”

* * *

Toriel dog-ears another page, thinks a moment, tears a blank sheet from the end of the diary. Frisk’s homework is still spread out on the floor; she reaches for a pencil, thinks better of it, finds a fat-tipped marker—the ink is washable, she’ll grant, but a pencil is far too easily erased . . . .

* * *

_Sans, my dear one,_

_Please read the pages I have marked for you._

_I know it does not change what you are feeling, what you fear, what has driven you away from us tonight._

_But I want you to know . . . how much you mean to me, even in the beginning, when the world seemed somehow brand-new to me and even then I knew something was going to be shaken to its core. The world, of course._

_And me._

_Do you know, dear one, what you have done for me?_

_Telling jokes through the door—_

_It was far more than that to me. Do you see, dear one? You are not alone. There is . . . sometimes . . . darkness in my SOUL as well. I know what that deep sadness is, that fear . . . Do you understand?_

_Even now I cannot explain why suddenly I felt so strongly for you, when I’ve felt no such love as strong as that except for our Frisk. But there it was, as if some part of your SOUL was calling out to mine—_

_Now it’s my turn, dear one._

_If you are reading this, you’re home, so I hope, perhaps, you have felt_ me _calling out to_ you.

_And you are not alone._

_I know you are ashamed for what has happened, but dear one—_

_Do not be._

_No letter of mine, however well-intentioned, can prove my love._

_Just listen, Sans, to the calling of my SOUL. It_ is _there._

_I will always love you._

_Tori._

* * *

She lays the note atop the diary, leaves them on the little table there beside the couch, settles down to wait some more. No point in going back to bed when the room feels cold without his warmth and the bed itself is far too big sans a certain skeleton. But out here, in the soft-pooled lamplight, ah, her eyes are heavy . . . Vaguely she wonders if he’d simply step through time and darkness (like he does) and end up . . . well. Not in the living room, of course . . . No, their room isn’t the place . . .

If she closes her eyes, for just a moment, the couch almost feels like her old and well-used reading chair; in her mind she can hear her child’s laughter as they play; there is the smell of a pie baking—not yet burning—and an indisputable presence at her side—much like the dream—those threads of cyan light.

* * *

From decency, he uses the front door.

The last thing he wants to do is scare her, and teleporting directly into their room would do just that . . .

So, then, the front door, like any decent Monster, and a quiet step, and cursing the squeaking hinges underneath his nonexistent breath, hoping it doesn’t wake her, good as her hearing is.

He stops, SOUL a heavy lump rather than lifeforce it seems within his ribcage; he stops and blinks in the puddle of a meager reading-light, at the sight of Tori, curled up as she can be on that little couch. Cautiously he shuts the door, studies her more closely, feels an aching, tugging insistence—the same, same thing as drew him back here—beckoning him home—whispering that all is well, all is well, all a manner of things shall be well:

Frisk is too gentle a child to be angry at him. Frisk themself knows what his fear is, has many of the same nightmares . . . And Tori? Tori—

His eyes alight on a note she’s left on the table there. A book is underneath, some of the pages dog-eared—from her, that’s real sacrilege, a scandal . . .

And then the words of the note sink in, written as they are in one of Frisk’s bright, bold markers: how she managed to make such broad lines and with such a great, great paw so delicate he does not know—it doesn’t matter—

* * *

He watches her a moment, loathe to wake her, knowing not what else to do.

Her mouth is open slightly and she’s snoring and he quietly places that among his memories of when she’s looked the most beautiful of all.

And then— 

At first he lifts a hand, slender phalanges easy enough to slip between her own broad and fine-furred fingers—until his mind snares on her note—on what she wrote back then (the . . . first run? . . . He tangles with the thought; he can’t bear to let it devour him again . . . )—

No, this is not a time to whisper her name or take her hand in his.

(Vainly he tries to forget that she’d done _both_ those things earlier, earlier, with the kiddo and the knife—but no—it wasn’t those—somehow those gestures, filled with love, were not enough, were worse—but tonight—tonight it was her SOUL he knew was calling him)—

In kind, in kind, he reaches out.

* * *

She stirs, blinks wearily, vision blurred for just a moment not so much by the reading-light as cyan trails and a knowing, harrowed, gleaming grin.

Broad arms of flesh and bone and fur enshroud him; she says nothing, nothing, knows he needs her to say nothing now. He is safe, is whole (no matter how broken he believes he is)—and most of all, he’s home . . .

She pulls him to her, dropping from the couch to kneel beside him, holding him; unspoken from his SOUL is all the grief and rage and splintered bitterness and love and fear and dark-doomed-nihilistic-words; from her SOUL are the faintest flares of indigo, a deep-dazzling-dark-blue, bespeaking hope and trust, compassion: fear and love the same. For him, for him: that is crucial: that much he must understand.

“What you have done for me, dear one,” she whispers finally, “Sans, you must believe it. Who I am today is in part because of you—do you see, dear one?”

He shakes his head—not really negation—just—

His phalanges are knotted in her nightgown, trembling, and well enough she understands.

“just . . . tired, tori.”

“Shh. Come, then.”

The little reading-lamp is out and the floorboards creak as she half-carries him down that narrow, narrow hall, past the room where the Human child and his brother sleep and dream, oblivious. Vaguely he hears the door snap shut, stares wide-eyed through the moonstruck room, catches Tori’s silhouette as she moves gently around him, pulling back the covers and quietly reaching for his coat.

He leans into her as she undresses him, as she still says nothing more, as here and there their SOULs meet somewhere in a dance, tentatively cast, at random. It surprises him (but why?) when she simply cradles him again and shifts herself into their bed; when she lays there with him in the hazy night, letting the silence and the threading of their SOULs say all as needs saying.

_You scared me so._

_I love you._

_I missed you._

_Why did you run from me, from us?_

_Where did you go?_

(Tangible things don’t matter so much to him, she knows, when it’s a bad night like this one has been: tangible things are too easily torn away: again, quietly insistent, does her SOUL seek his, offering a question and a shelter and an act of love and mercy.

(Tangible things don’t matter so much but he still takes the greatest care with her, even if it’s through their SOULs that the act is mutually wrought: for her, for her, there’s this; would that she must know how beautiful she is to him, when the tiny gifts that he can give her, if not all the rest, elicit a shudder and a cry.

(Tangible things don’t matter so much, ah, but still she feels him tremble when her breath is warm against his cheekbone, or his clavicle; his SOUL catches there against her own when her great paws take to gently wandering the paths of him, a labyrinth he always is, no matter how many times she’s touched him thus.)

He’s almost impatient now—neither unduly nor unkindly so, but it’s something in the same with that restlessness as drove him from the light and warmth of the house tonight into—the darkness—

Darkness?

She inhales deeply, muzzle pressed against his jaw. For a moment something registers—

And then she feels the quiet pleading of his SOUL, the answer to her question, the acceptance, the desperation not for the act for its own sake—

_tori._

_i’ve never said i love you. but._

That same desperation’s catching—she knew it, too, back then when all alone she had that dream and woke and found he wasn’t there. The rhythm of the act is quick, sharp flicks of light flared out between the two of them as well as the usual, soft-spun threads of cyan and blue magic binding them in some ways more wholly than coupled lovers cast the both of them in flesh.

_please know it’s true._

More brightly then the light: the rhythm’s caught and lost and, in being broken, is all the more perfect, sweet, and full: his SOUL has never seemed so whole to her before, so raw, singing so with life as now, when his half-muffled love-cries are not merely that—

There is real agony, in parts equal with the pleasured rapture, and now there’s nothing he can do to hide it from her—not like this—

But well enough he must feel the same from her: when their eyes meet—when she’s still fighting for her breath—it’s not merely the look of lovers that they give—

She wraps him in her arms again, their bodies and SOULs alike still swaying in the afterglow, the last remnants of the song. He lays his head against her chest, just beneath her jaw; soon enough he sleeps, as well enough she knows he would. She trails her fangs so very gently there against his skull, letting the softness of her muzzle whisper there a kiss, knowing he appreciates them both: small acts of flesh and bone.

Once more she inhales, deeply, feeling sleep steal over her, feeling his hand still wrapped so tightly around her own. But neither sleep nor coital afterglow are enough to jar from her the fact of where he must have been—for he smells like the mountain.

**Author's Note:**

> I: "Water From Your Spring";  
> II: "Buoyancy";  
> III: "Music Master"—  
> all are poems by the Sufi mystic Rumi.
> 
> Also, Tori's dates? "2X—"? I assume that centuries have passed since Chara fell in 201X, but didn't want to specify how long, so "2X—" the year became. ^_^


End file.
